Details for Simon Gugenheim House

Historical Marker — Atlas Number 5355006319

Data

Marker Number 6319
Atlas Number 5355006319
Marker Title Simon Gugenheim House
Index Entry Gugenheim, Simon, House
Address 1513 N Chaparral, Heritage Park
City Corpus Christi
County Nueces
UTM Zone 14
UTM Easting 658097
UTM Northing 3076746
Subject Codes houses, residential buildings; Business topics, general; markets, merchantiles
Marker Year 1976
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark Yes
Marker Location Heritage Park, 1513 North Chaparral, Corpus Christi
Private Property No
Marker Condition In Situ
Marker Size 27" x 42"
Marker Text This structure was built at 1101 North Chaparral for Simon and Lila Belle (Soloman) Gugenheim. Simon Gugenheim (1861-1942) was a native Texan who came to Corpus Christi in 1882 with forty dollars in his pocket and remained to become wealthy. He and a friend formed the Gugenheim and Cohn Drygoods Co. In 1891, the year of his marriage, he acquired a great deal of property when he helped rescue the city's economy during a recession in 1896, and later was a successful investor in the petroleum industry. The Gugenheims had this house built about 1900. They moved into a modest apartment and sold their home in 1924. Among their philanthropies was a gift of four lots on South Broadway as the site for a YMCA building, where Gugenheim's portrait was hung. Their Victorian house of the early 1900s was moved to its present site during a period of city growth. The turret on this house survived all others in the domestic architecture of the city. The builder adorned the house with bay windows; a lunette in the front pediment; and gables faced with shingles; ornamenting the porches with columns, brackets, and banisters, and with cornices displaying wooden beads, spindles, lattices, and other Victorian gingerbread. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1976

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